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"Man is born free, and everywhere he is in shackles."
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"When a man is wrapped up in himself, he makes a pretty small package."

"After coming into contact with a religious man I always feel I must wash my hands."

"The ideas gained by men before they are twenty-five are practically the only ideas they shall have in their lives."

"It is the child in man that is the source of his uniqueness and creativeness, and the playground is the optimal milieu for the unfolding of his capacities and talents."

"The historian must have some conception of how men who are not historians behave. Otherwise he will move in a world of the dead. He can only gain that conception through personal experience, and he can only use his personal experiences when he is a genius."

"The dons of Oxford and Cambridge are too busy educating the young men to be able to teach them anything."
Explore more quotes by Jean-Jacques Rousseau

"They say that Caliph Omar, when consulted about what had to be done with the library of Alexandria, answered as follows: 'If the books of this library contain matters opposed to the Koran, they are bad and must be burned. If they contain only the doctrine of the Koran, burn them anyway, for they are superfluous.' Our learned men have cited this reasoning as the height of absurdity. However, suppose Gregory the Great was there instead of Omar and the Gospel instead of the Koran. The library would still have been burned, and that might well have been the finest moment in the life of this illustrious pontiff."

"All wickedness comes from weakness. The child is wicked only because he is weak. Make him strong, he will be good. He who could do everything would never do harm."

"What, then, is the government? An intermediary body established between the subjects and the sovereign for their mutual communication, a body charged with the execution of the laws and the maintenance of freedom, both civil and political."

"When something an affliction happens to you, you either let it defeat you, or you defeat it."

"Are your principles not engraved in all hearts, and in order to learn your laws is it not enough to go back into oneself and listen to the voice of one's conscience in the silence of the passions? There you have true philosophy. Let us learn to be satisfied with that, and without envying the glory of those famous men who are immortalized in the republic of letters, let us try to set between them and us that glorious distinction which people made long ago between two great peoples: one knew how to speak well; the other how to act well."

"The first sentiment of man was that of his existence, his first care that of preserving it."
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